Will A 301 Forward Work For Us?

Hi, we run a real estate company and have had a website up for many years. On many searches we come up very high organically. We own the domain, and the site is through a company that hosts the whole thing for us. We are having issues with them and wanted to leave. So, we purchased a new site through a different company. They are currently both up and running. Can we keep the old SEO history and organic results with a 301 forward? As soon as we stop paying company 1, they are going to take the site down. Will that completely get rid of the existing organic rating or can we somehow keep it? We pay company 1 a few hundred a month and would like to stop as soon as site 2 is completely ready to go.

1) You put up corresponding URLs on the new site for all URLs on the old site

2) You give the search engines enough time to crawl the 301-redirects (maybe 3 months?)

You should be okay.

The new site will be totally independent and will not have the same URL's as the old site. It's a different site and is not the same as the old one in any way. In regards to #2, During that 3 months will the old site have to be on a server? They're probably going to delete it as soon as we cancel with them. We don't want to pay them $400 a month any longer. Will that be necessary?

If they're deleting the site and your account, then it sounds like you won't be able to 301-redirect things. In which case, you're pretty much screwed and starting from scratch.

One thing you can do, however, is tell Google via your webmaster tools account that the site is changing addresses. That *might* help.

Although, in re-reading your first post, you said you're keeping the domain? If so, then I don't understand what the problem is. It doesn't matter where it's hosted, why not just put the entire site as is on your new host?

If they're deleting the site and your account, then it sounds like you won't be able to 301-redirect things. In which case, you're pretty much screwed and starting from scratch.

One thing you can do, however, is tell Google via your webmaster tools account that the site is changing addresses. That *might* help.

Although, in re-reading your first post, you said you're keeping the domain? If so, then I don't understand what the problem is. It doesn't matter where it's hosted, why not just put the entire site as is on your new host?

Hi Jill... We were told if we keep the old site going and create our new site on a new domain, we can just forward to the new domain and keep all the existing search results. We really don't want to start from scratch. It's been up for 14 years. If we point the domain to our new server and make the new site on the old address, would things stay how they were? Thanks...

Well, they can redirect the old domain through their registrar or through their new hosting company if they actually control the domain.

If all the old content/URLs are going away, I don't know that it would be worth the trouble to do a redirect. What are visitors going to find on the new site that is relevant to the old site? Annoying people is not, in my opinion, the best of marketing practices.

You don't want to keep paying the other party to continue hosting your site for you. That part makes sense.

But if you own the domain, why would you get a new one? This doesn't make any sense.

And why a new site, whether on a new domain or on the current one? This doesn't make any sense either, unless you just want to start from scratch and build a new and/or better site.

We are putting the new site on a new domain name for 2 reasons... 1. We didn't want to just axe the old site and lose all of it's organic search results. 2. We wanted to be able to keep that site active and working for clients while we work on the new site. We figured we could just forward the old domain to the new one once the new one was working. We are in control of the domain name, but not the hosting. We actually like the new domain name, so we don't mind if people end up there. What is the best move at this point? Can we stop paying the old company for the hosting and the site, and forward to our new site and keep all existing SEO work and organic results we've built up over the years?

Once the old site goes offline (and you redirect it), its search performance will gradually degrade because the search engines will no longer find the content they were indexing.

You're trying to have it both ways. If you want to keep the old site's traffic going then you have to move the entire site to a new hosting platform. If that is not possible then just redirect the domain name to a page on the new site that explains to visitors what happened and leave it at that.

Sounds like you're using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.You wanted to move hosting,so why not do just and only that.

That new Domain name will cause you some avoidable very quiet months. Take a step back and see if you can rescue the situation and talk to the existing company that host it now to arrange for the site to be copied over to your new host. Then when it's ready to go, just change the NameServers.

No disruption and all established SEO performance with incoming Links go with it.I have done this several times and it is as near seamless as it gets. The only thing to watch is the Geo Location of the Server plus the Domain Name and Target Country.

There's nothing wrong with redesigning your site and there's nothing wrong with changing domain names or switching hosts. But there are many complicated issues that come with doing those things, most of which can't be determined in a forum setting.

This is an important enough issue that you should be hiring a professional to review yor situation and both sites. They'll be able to make sure everything goes smoothly and you don't lose your previous search engine traffic.